Covid Easter

(written during Covid lockdown) 

This has been a strange Lent – during which, whether we chose to or not, we have all been fasting from many things we would rather not have fasted from – “the ‘Lentiest’ Lent that has ever Lented”, according to a local priest. As we have “attended” mass via online livestream from the Christ Prince of Peace, Weybridge, it has been impossible not to feel a bit sorry for our dear Fr. Con, saying the liturgy in solitude in an empty church. But I am encouraged – and perhaps Fr. Con is too – by the wonderful Bishop Kallistos Ware, who wrote of his first experience of an Orthodox liturgy:

My first impression then was the church is empty… Then, with overwhelming conviction I felt: The church… is full, full of invisible worshipers. We – this small, visible congregation – are being taken up into an action far greater than ourselves… The liturgy is something that embraces two worlds at once, for… in every place of worship, however humble its outward appearance…, the faithful are taken up into the “heavenly places”…; not merely the local congregation are present, but the Church universal… and Christ himself.

How can all these empty churches be full? Because in Jesus

all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible… He is before all things, and in him all things hold together… whether things on earth or things in heaven.(Col. 1:16-20)

In Him, therefore, we are “held together” with “all things in heaven and on earth”. And in heaven there is an eternal liturgy more glorious than anything we can make on earth:

Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and the seventy elders of Israel went up and saw the God of Israel. Under his feet was something like a pavement made of sapphire, clear as the sky itself. But God did not raise his hand against these leaders of the Israelites; they saw God, and they ate and drank. (Ex. 24:9-11)

“I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.” (Matt. 8:11)

Then I heard what sounded like a great multitude, like the roar of rushing waters and like loud peals of thunder, shouting:

'Hallelujah!
For our Lord God Almighty reigns.
Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory!
For the wedding of the Lamb has come,
and his bride has made herself ready.'
(Rev. 19:6-7)

Every time we go to church, we witness a glimpse (a pattern, a typos) of what was “shown us on the mountain” (Ex. 25:40, Heb. 8:5-6). We are joined with the heavenly liturgy, where there are four living creatures, twenty-four presbyters, seven spirits, the Woman clothed with the Sun, tens of thousands of angels and, at its centre, “the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world” (Rev. 13:8). Such a liturgy cannot be ruined even by the absence of an earthly congregation, or a stuttering YouTube livestream.

Tonight, we “attended” by said livestream the first night of Easter – the Mass of the Lord’s Supper. How can we celebrate a Supper at which we are not present? St Paul tells us:

God has put the body together… so that there should be no division in the body… If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honoured, every part rejoices with it. Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. (1 Cor. 12:24-17)

Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a communion with the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a communion with the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we, who are many, are one body, for we all share the one bread. (1 Cor. 10:16-17)

Therefore, where the Church is, there is the Eucharist. And where the Eucharist is, there is the Church. And where either of the above is, there is Christ. “In him all things hold together.” Every part of the Body rejoices tonight, held together by Christ even if we are separated from each other in lockdown.

Thank you, Fr. Con, for reminding us of that fact.

Have a blessed Easter.

N.